Guardrail construction on Airline Drive in St. Charles Parish to begin Monday

Brett Duke/The Times-PicayuneEast St. Charles Parish Volunteer firefighters assist in hooking a chain from a tow truck to a submerged vehicle in the canal that runs along Airline Drive. No one was injured in the December 2008 accident. Crews will begin erecting a long-awaited guardrail along a 5.5-mile stretch of Airline Drive in St. Charles Parish on Monday.

The right westbound lane in that area will be closed from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays during construction for the safety of the contractor, DOTD spokesman Dustin Annison said.

The canal, which is said to be more than 20 feet deep in some spots, has claimed 13 lives since 2001 in more than two-dozen crashes.

"It's good to see this guardrail finally go up," St. Charles Parish President V.J. St. Pierre Jr. said in a statement. "It's a project that has been long overdue for the safety of our residents who travel that dangerous section of highway day in and day out. My only concern is that it functions the way it's supposed to and doesn't cause any further problems for motorists; but all indications are that it will help save lives."

The state made a number of safety improvements in 2005, including closing some cuts in the neutral ground and adding reflective markers in others and extending turn lanes. State Police studying the highway said percentage of crashes into the canal dropped to 1.5 percent of accidents between St. Rose and Norco from 2004 through 2006, down from 3.5 percent from 2001 to 2003.

But Sen. Joel Chaisson II, D-Destrehan and Rep. Gary Smith, D-Norco, got a $1 million appropriation for further safety improvements on the highway, which led to the current project.

State officials had been looking at a flexible cable barrier, but engineers determined that the soil next to the canal wasn't strong enough to handle the stresses caused by an impact of a vehicle and switched to a rigid barrier, despite concerns of a multi-agency task force that some vehicles could bounce off the barrier into oncoming traffic.

Matt Scallan can be reached at mscallan@timespicayune.com or 985.652.0953.